


We Begin Again

by Captain_Jade



Category: Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Aftermath, Angst, Anxiety, Fix-It, Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, Imaginary Friends, It Gets Better, Mostly historically accurate, Nightmares, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shell Shock, Sibling Bonding, Sickfic, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-12 17:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21480478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Captain_Jade/pseuds/Captain_Jade
Summary: This movie absolutely traumatized me, so I need to give it a happier ending. Except you know me with my angst, so at first I'm gonna make it worse.Jojo gets a letter from his dad that says he's alive and coming back home. But they have to wait weeks, so in the meantime, Elsa takes care of a grieving ten-year-old with shell-shock, while she has no income and no idea how to survive.
Comments: 28
Kudos: 192





	1. The Second Best Thing

**Author's Note:**

> I swear that the whole story won't be this bad.

"Elsa, what are we going to do?"

Jojo is trying to mask the fact that he's on the verge of tears. He and Elsa are lying in the grass in a park, watching the stars come out. Elsa seems ecstatic. Jojo does not share her feelings on the situation.

"I don't know. Will you stop asking me that? I do not hold all of the knowledge in the world just because I am older than you." Elsa spreads her arms out on the grass and breathes in the air. "It's been so long since I've been outside," she says. "I forgot how beautiful it is."

Jojo remains silent for a while. "Are you really not worried about what you're going to do?" he asks again, his voice barely louder than a whisper.

Elsa looks at him curiously. "You said 'you' that time. Not we."

Shrug. Jojo sits up and pulls his knees to his chest. His heart is beating a tad faster than usual, and he has a sickly feeling of panic setting in his chest.

"I'm gonna go home."

"Okay."

"...Are you...are you going to come home too?"

"Eventually."

"Um...are you going to come back and live in my house? You can stay in Ingar's room."

Elsa closes her eyes and gives a quiet chuckle. "That's why you tried to trick me into thinking you won the war." It's not a question. Jojo's cheeks grow red. "And it's not because you like me. It's because you're scared." His cheeks grow even redder. "And I'll tell you something. My family is dead, Jojo. And so is your mother, and it's likely that your father and sister are too."

She sits up and looks him in the eye. "Your mother took care of me. It's the least I can do to take care of her son. And no, I have no idea what we're going to do. But the war is over and I no longer have to live in a hole in the wall, so things can't be all that bad."

Jojo nods slowly. The panicky feeling is still there.

"That's not good enough for you?"

A long stretch of silence hangs over them until Jojo breaks it. "I'm going back home."

Jojo Betzler is terrified.

After walking around the house flailing his hands and trying to get rid of the feeling in his chest for ten minutes, he drags the record player into his room, places a Frank Sinatra album in, changes into his pajamas, and goes to bed with the light still on.

* * *

The place where Elsa used to live was right above Jojo's bedroom. That meant that she heard all kinds of strange things, including snoring, random noises that he made for no apparent reason at all (which is common of ten-year-olds), and Jojo talking to his imaginary friend, which sometimes was so funny she used to have to bury her face in her pillow to keep from laughing.

She has never heard a scream of utter and complete terror come from his room before. Sure, screams of “heil Hitler” were common. (And disturbing). Screams of being startled by something. (Usually spiders). Fake screams while playing. But this is completely different, and it's followed up by hyperventilating. It sounds like the scream he gave when he first discovered her in the wall.

She figures she should probably figure out why he's screaming at 2 o'clock in the morning.

Elsa creeps down the stairs and peers into Jojo's room. He's laying back down in his bed, pretending to be asleep, but she can see he's quivering. "Jojo? Are you alright?"

No answer. "Jojo?" she asks again. He still doesn't move. Elsa stands there for a long time contemplating what to do. Finally, she just goes back to bed, feeling a little guilty about it.

Jojo gives a sigh of relief once she's gone. His heart is still racing. He turns the light back on; he'd turned it off so Elsa wouldn't think he was awake (or a baby for keeping the light on all night). Visions of the dream he just had float around in his head, and he presses a pillow against his stomach. The sickly panicky feeling is back, but it's back with a lot more intensity than before.

Stupidly, tears begin to well in his eyes. He wants his mom to comfort him. To hug him and sing to him and love him. A pitiful sob escapes his lips. He's so scared.

He almost goes upstairs to find Elsa, but he doesn't want her to think he's a baby. So he digs through the box under his bed and finds his old teddy bear from when he was a baby, hugs it, and goes back to bed.

* * *

The next day is very surprisingly a lot better. Jojo and Elsa draw pictures to hang up in Jojo's room to replace the posters of Hitler, then dance to records for about an hour, and then an American soldier randomly gives Elsa an entire Woolton Pie.

Jojo decides that the rest of his life is either going to be awful and sad or amazing.

"I don't know what I was thinking," he tells Elsa as they hang up a few butterflies above his headboard.

"Well, you know how you were told that Jews could brainwash you?"

"Yeah..."

"They just told you that to cover up the truth...Germans are the ones who brainwash you."

Jojo gapes at her, and she covers up a laugh.

"You know," Jojo says, as he tapes a drawing of a record player next to the butterflies, "I think you make a better older sister than you would a girlfriend anyway."

Elsa grins at him. "I'm glad. Don't let it discourage you, though. You'll find someone."

His heart doesn't do the weird jumpy thing until he has to go to bed. He stays awake tugging and twisting his hair for a half an hour before he finally musters up the courage to go to sleep and face the possibility of another wildly vivid nightmare.


	2. A Change of Plans

“You wanna tell me what you’ve been screaming about the past two nights?” Elsa asks, biting into one of the apples Jojo convinced the grocery store clerk to give him for free by giving the clerk puppy dog eyes.

Jojo twirls his fork around in a slice of Woolton pie, which he’s already getting tired of. “No,” he clicks his tongue nonchalantly.

Elsa rolls her eyes. “You know, I have nightmares too. You don’t have to be all embarrassed about it.”

Jojo shrugs. “Well, I have nightmares. That’s why I was screaming. You already know the answer to the question.”

“What were your nightmares about?”

Jojo huffs and angrily takes a sip of water. “Nothing,” he grumbles.

“Okay, gosh.”

“I want a dog.”

“We can’t even feed ourselves, Jojo, you really think we can afford a dog?”

“Maybe that soldier will give you a giant can of dog food. Why’d he give you a pie anyway? That was weird.”

“I don’t know.”

“Where did  _ he _ get an entire pie from?”

“I don’t know, Jojo. Just be glad he did. We’re probably gonna have to start begging on the streets eventually. You probably won’t have any trouble with that. You just give people puppy dog eyes and they’ll empty their pockets.”

“I don’t want to beg on the streets.”

“Well, I didn’t want to live in a hole in the wall,”

“People will laugh at me.”

“People already laugh at you.”

Jojo made a frustrated growl-like noise. “Why is this so difficult?”

“Winning an argument with me? Because I’m very persuasive.”

“No. Why is...why is everything so difficult?”

Elsa gives him a sad smile. “Because you’re  _ lucky _ , Jojo. Some unfortunate people live their whole lives in comfort, never knowing sorrow. But without sorrow to compare it to, joy is meaningless. We’ve both lived through some pretty awful shit, yeah?”

Jojo nods.

“That means we’re also gonna live through some pretty incredible shit, too.”

There’s a long pause. Jojo looks up at her meekly. “But...my  _ mom _ ,” he whispers. He stiffles a sob, pushing away his breakfast and covering his face with his hands.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it,” Elsa says softly. “Believe me, I know.”

* * *

“Can you get me a cup of water?”

“You can get yourself a cup of water.”

“But my head hurts.”

“Your feet don’t.”

“CAN YOU JUST GIVE ME A DAMN CUP OF WATER?”

Elsa looks at Jojo incredulously. “What the heck is your problem?” This is probably not a very good thing to say, she realizes afterwards, because she knows exactly what Jojo’s problem is. Thankfully, he doesn’t give any sarcastic replies that would have made her feel guilty. Instead, he gives her a death glare, stomps over to the kitchen sink, and pours himself a cup of water.

He stomps back over to the couch. “My head hurts,” he repeats.

“You already told me that.”

“Exactly. So I’d appreciate it if you would be quiet.”

Elsa clenches her teeth, swallowing back the profanities she was about to unleash upon a grieving, sleep-deprived ten-year-old. “Of course,” she says instead. Jojo lays down on the couch with his back facing her.

He hadn’t woken up screaming all that often in the past week, but Elsa can tell he still has nightmares because of how  _ tired _ he looks. She’s not sure what to do.

She knows that this isn’t going to work for very long. She can’t take care of Jojo forever. He needs a real parent.

It’s been barely a half hour before Jojo wakes up. “Are you okay?” Elsa asks him.

Jojo sits up and looks up at her feebly. “Elsa,” he squirms in his seat and bites his lip. “I did something really bad.”

“What did you do?”

“I yelled at Yorkie.”

“Your friend?”

“Yeah.” A tear slides down his cheek; he swiftly wipes it away. “I called him a terrible person for being a nazi. I said it was people like him that...that killed my mom. And then I also yelled at you. And I’m...sorry. I don’t know why…and now Yorkie probably hates me. My best and only friend.”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Elsa sits down next to him.

Jojo leans against her. She wraps her arm around him. “I don’t think Yorkie hates you. You should apologize to him. I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“ _ I _ don’t even understand.”

They sit there for a long time. Jojo eventually falls asleep, drooping onto her lap. Elsa stares into the middle distance. She isn’t sure what she was expecting to happen when she was free, but it definitely wasn’t to adopt a ten-year-old German kid who used to practically worship the man that killed her parents.

She keeps telling herself that it’ll be okay, that they’ll find a way to survive together. She’s not being very convincing.

* * *

Jojo’s solution to his nightmares tonight is to simply not go to bed at all. “Well, I’m not letting you have coffee. I have a feeling that wouldn’t go very well,” Elsa declares, which is her only opposition to this proposition. She goes to bed and leaves Jojo alone downstairs.

So now there are no images of explosions and gunshots and bloody corpses. But there is still a weighing sorrow on his chest as he stands and stares at a picture of his family.

“Mama.” Shaky breath. Loud sigh. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too, my cub.” Jojo imagines her standing behind him. “But I’m proud of you.”

He turns to look at his imaginary mother and then looks at the ground. “Why the hell would you be proud of me?”

His imaginary mother sits down on the couch and smooths his hair and kisses his forehead. Jojo starts to cry.

“Shhh. Don’t cry, baby. I’m here. More importantly,  _ you’re _ here. You’re here and Elsa’s here and you’re going to be okay, sweetheart. I wish more than anything I could be there with you, but you do understand now why I did what I did, don’t you? It’s up to us to make the world a better place. We do what we can.”

Jojo hugs a picture of Rosie and sobs. “But I can’t do anything,” he tells her. “Not without you.”

He doesn't know how long he cries for, but eventually, he falls asleep.

He wakes up in his bed, with the picture of his mother on his nightstand.

With closer observation, however, he notices something else on his nightstand, obviously placed there by Elsa. Something that makes his heart jump...but this time, it’s in a good way. Jojo smacks himself in the face to make sure he’s not dreaming.

It’s a letter.

From his dad.

He's alive, and he's coming home.


	3. An Absence

“I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming.”

“Nope. It’s real.”

“Elsa, maybe when he comes home, he’ll adopt you and we can live here and everything will be perfect again.”

Elsa stares at him. “That would be nice, Jojo,” she tells him slowly, “but that would never happen.”

Jojo either doesn’t hear this or chooses to ignore it. “Can I go over to Yorki’s house? I’m gonna apologize for yelling at him yesterday.”

“Do whatever you want.”

“Okay, thanks!”

Elsa stands staring at the door long after Jojo’s gone. She silently walks over to the couch to sit down. She almost doesn’t want Jojo’s father to come home.

Almost, because she would be crazy if she wanted to keep perpetually playing house the way they were. She is not Jojo’s mother, and she can’t take care of him. She can't even take care of herself.

But she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to her when Jojo’s father does come home. The future is still so uncertain.

She ́d always kind of felt as if everything would make sense after the Germans lost the war, that she would go back to living a normal life.

Whatever they’re doing now is anything but normal.

Elsa examines the picture of Jojo’s family on the wall. ̈ ̈What do I do, Rosie?” she asks softly.

Rosie didn’t deserve to die. An anger bubbles underneath her surface, but she’s far too tired to be angry right now. Elsa goes for a walk. She doesn’t know how long she walks for, only that by the time she gets back, her legs and feet are sore. Her mind isn’t really that much clearer, though.

* * *

“Hi, Mrs. Yorki’s Mom. Is Yorki here?”

“Jojo! Hi, I haven’t seen you in forever! My God, what happened to your face?”

“Oh, I blew myself up with a hand grenade.”

“Ah. I see. Yes, Yorki’s home. He’s up in his room.”

“Great. Thanks Mrs. Yorki’s Mom!”

Jojo opens the door slowly. He looks down sheepishly. “Uh, hey, Yorki. I just wanted to apologize for yelling at you yesterday. That was pretty stupid. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s alright,” Yorki replies. He pushes his glasses back up his nose. “I knew you weren’t really mad at me. I’d be pretty pissed at everything if I were you, too.”

“Oh, that’s a relief.” Jojo grins.

“You wanna go play Four Square?”

“Sure!”

For a few hours, Jojo is a normal kid again. He hadn’t been one of those since the war started. It was...it was nice.

But then he goes home. The silence makes him uncomfortable, so he tries out a few records, but they all remind him too much of his mom, so he just sits on the couch in silence and tries not to think about anything while he waits for Elsa to come home from wherever she is.

His dad is coming home, he should be happy about that. But he’s  _ not happy _ . Where’s Elsa? What if she’s abandoned him? When she comes home, he gives her a hug.

“Um...hi?” She pats him on the head awkwardly. “I have dinner. It’s from a trash can, but it looks alright. There’s no worms or bugs or anything. It smells normal.”

* * *

Jojo wants to crawl out of his skin. At least out of his mind. He wants to drown everything out. Sleeping won't fix it; he'll just be haunted with images of hanged people and dead bodies and explosions and war. He wants his mother so badly his chest aches with a weighing sorrow. He lets out a pathetic-sounding sob and sits up in bed.

He twists his hair and squeezes his teddy bear as tears slip down his cheeks faster and faster. He stares at the picture of his mother until it gets too much to bear and he knocks it off the table.

It shatters.

His breath catches.

Jojo rocks slowly back and forth. Nothing can fix this. Not even his dad coming home. What will that do? His mom will still be dead, and it'll still be his fault. He is numb and overflowing with sadness at the same time. He sobs, his head between his knees and his hands gripping the sides of his head as if he's holding it together.

He's not holding it together.

Everything is falling apart.

Elsa opens the door. When Jojo looks up, he sees that there are tears staining her cheeks as well. Neither of them speak. She climbs onto his bed next to him and hugs him. Jojo buries his face in her chest.

It is hours before either of them calm down, and by then it's just because they're so tired. They have plenty more tears to cry.

Elsa gently tucks Jojo into bed and leaves without saying a word.

After a few minutes, he gets up and follows her to Inge's room. Surprisingly, it doesn't take long before he falls asleep. Even more surprisingly, there are no nightmares. He sleeps soundly for the first time since the day his mother died.


	4. Time

There’s a lot of crying during the weeks that follow, and not too much talking.

There are still moments of joy sometimes. Elsa teaches Jojo to draw (he has a love-hate relationship with butterflies now). They go on walks. Jojo sees Yorki sometimes. But he’s not living. He’s just waiting for something to happen.

As time goes on, he worries more and more that his father isn’t really going to come home at all. Maybe he was killed sometime after he wrote the letter. Maybe he heard about everything that happened, with Rosie being dead and Inge being gone and it all being  _ Jojo’s fault _ , and this is one of the things he cries about nearly every day. He’s so  _ tired  _ of this. Crying almost every day is exhausting.

One night, after brushing his teeth for longer than needed because he was deep in thought, he walks into Inge’s room (which was now Elsa’s room, but he still thought of it as his sister’s) and asks quietly, “Elsa, did my mom hate me?”

Elsa looks up, surprised at this question. “Why would she hate you?”

“Because I was a nazi. And she was a rebel. She must have told you.”

“She didn’t hate you, Jojo. Not at all. She loved you.” Elsa took Jojo’s hands in hers as he sat down on the bed.

“I was so...I was so...um...brainwashed,” he said.

“She knew that. She knew that wasn’t the real you. I figured that out pretty quickly. I think that was pretty much common knowledge. That’s probably why you got picked on so much. You were never a nazi. You were a kid who liked to play dress up.”

“I don’t feel like a kid anymore. I didn’t get to be a kid for very long,” Jojo whispers.

Elsa gives him a weak smile. “I didn’t either, kid.”

Jojo lays down on his back, staring at the ceiling. “I’m kind of sad that mama never knew we were friends.”

“I think about that sometimes,” Elsa says.

She turns off the light and they both get under the covers.

* * *

In the morning, there was another letter from Jojo’s father.

For some reason, he isn’t as excited as the first time. He doesn't scream about it or jump up and down on his bed. He just reads it all quietly and then hands it to Elsa. It isn’t that he isn’t looking forward to seeing his father again…

Well, actually, it is.

Jojo’s father does not know that both Rosie and Inge are dead.

Jojo will have to tell him.

After reading the letter, he collapses on the couch. “I’m so tired,” he tells Elsa, when she walks into the room.

“I feel like I haven’t slept in days.”

“You’ve done nothing  _ but _ sleep for days,” Elsa points out.

Jojo coughs.

“Are you sick?”

“No.” He coughs again.

“You sound sick.”

“It’s fine.”

“Okay.”

He’s probably not fine. Since the moment he woke up, his head felt like it was going to explode and his throat ached so much he skipped breakfast. (Not that it made that much of a difference, though...they’re always so low on food. He’s always constantly hungry.)

Everything is wrong.

About  _ everything. _

“The world is so messed up, Elsa,” Jojo murmurs.

“Believe me, I know.”

Jojo coughs a few more times. It’s an awful, deep, dry cough that makes Elsa worried. She sighs and sets her book down. “Jojo, that really doesn’t sound good. Are you sure you’re feeling alright?”

Jojo just groans in response. He’s lying on his stomach with his arm hanging off the side of the couch.

“You don’t look too good either.” Elsa kneels down in front of him and gently puts her hand on his forehead.

It feels cool to the touch. Jojo closes his eyes and presses his head up against her hand. “That feels good,” he slurs.

“Well, it doesn’t feel good to me. Do we have a thermometer?”

_ Funny how she said “we” and not “you,” _ Jojo thinks. “Wait, what did you say?”

Elsa sighs. “Thermometer.”

“Oh. It’s in the cupboard in the bathroom.”

“Alright. Stay there.”

“I’m definitely not going anywhere.”

By the time Elsa gets back, Jojo is dead asleep, snoring and everything. She pries his mouth open and sticks the thermometer inside, then watches as the red liquid creeps up all the way to 102 degrees.

“Shit,” she says.

This is definitely not good. There’s no  _ way _ they can afford a doctor.

Elsa places the thermometer on the table, then goes to get a cold washcloth to put on Jojo’s forehead.

* * *

It’s hours before he wakes up, and when he does, it’s from another nightmare.

“Hey. Shhhh. It’s alright. Calm down.” Elsa sits down on the end of the couch.

Jojo sits up and leans against her, quietly crying.

After a few moments Elsa brushes his hair away from his forehead and asks, “Can you tell me what it was about this time?”

They sit there for a while. Jojo nods.

“It was...it was about my mom,” he whispers. “In the dream, she didn’t die...the...the way she did in real life. In the dream, she died because... _ I killed her _ .” These words have barely come out of his mouth before he starts sobbing. “It’s my fault!” He cries.

“Oh, Jojo,” Elsa cradles him in her arms, rocking him back and forth gently. “It’s not your fault. It’s not.”

“I want her back.”

“I know. I know.”

They’re so miserable. This is not the way it was supposed to be when the war ended! They were supposed to live happily ever after all together!

“Do you think we’re going to be okay, Elsa?” Jojo asks. “Eventually, I mean.”

“Yes,” Elsa says. She rarely lies to Jojo anymore. But this is one of those times where a lie is what they need.

* * *

It is late at night when somebody knocks on the door.

Jojo is still awake. This is, of course, because he just got done throwing up, but he’s awake nonetheless. After he brushes his teeth, he answers the door.

“Jojo?” the man says. His breath is taken away. “Is that you, Johannes?”

At first he doesn’t recognize him. Then he stumbles backwards, his eyes wide. “Papa?” He asks weakly.

“Jojo!” His father walks in the door and sweeps his son up in a hug, squeezing him, not wanting to let him go. “I missed you, buddy. I missed you so much. Oh God, let me look at you.”

He examines his boy, hand on the side of his face. “What happened to your face, Johannes?”

“I, uh...I accidentally exploded myself.”

“You’ll have to tell me that story another time. Where’s your mother?”

It is the question Jojo has been dreading.

“Papa,” he whispers, so quietly his father has to strain to hear him. “She’s...she’s gone.”

Elias Betzler doesn’t speak. He just hugs his son again, much gentler this time, staring off into space. Jojo starts crying again. He’s starting to get really sick of crying. It’s all he does anymore. But it feels good to be comforted by his father. “It’s okay,” Elias says softly. “It’s okay.”

Jojo doesn’t really remember much about his father, but he definitely doesn’t remember him ever crying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh I feel like this was so bad. I'm sorry!


End file.
